In today's world, architectural solutions are facing new challenges and opportunities to reinvent the way we design our built space.
With the advancement in digital fabrication techniques and computational design methods, the building industry needed to step up their game and offer design solutions that integrate Concept Design, Engineering, Fabrication and Management in the whole process.
The challenge consisted in creating a Design methodology to integrate Computational design tools that could let us explore the design in a simple and iterative process to find the best solution in terms of Feasibility, Desirability and Viability.
How might we combine Industrial Design methods with computational design tools to innovate in the construction industry?
PROJECT BRIEF
The Stadium
The project is a new football stadium in Mexico. The overall masterplan can invite more than 35 thousand fans, that will enjoy a state of the art stadium with retail stores and a luxury hotel.
The design consists of 27 columns aligned in an oval shape to carry the load of the slabs with the grandstands and the open radial hallways.
Additionally a suspended polycarbonate roof is held by four main masts.
The Facade
On the other hand, the facade Design and Development was a whole different challenge with a different approach and it was commissioned to CLASSIFIED, experts in metallic solutions.
The main function of the facade is mainly to protect the inside from the outside, letting light and ventilation in but smoothly covering the main structure.
Therefore the challenge was to Design a system that could adapt to a diverse set of parameters and still find an aesthetic solution without compromising performance.
Design Challenge: Design a cool, functional, and "easy" to build facade system for the New Stadium.
KICKOFF: Understanding the big picture.
Ideation Process
The challenge was to find a design solution for a Prefabricated lightweight structure that could maintain a Free form aesthetic in a simple, systematic and cost efficient way of producing, transporting and installing it.
The solution was to develop a Parametric Design Script using Grasshopper as our main tool to let us explore the design possibilities in a more efficient manner, and could let us design in detail while integrating it in a macro scale in a matter of minutes instead of days.
1.-The first step was to create a design workshop with the company´s design & engineering team together with project management, to broadly understand the company´s production model, this means main actors and main activities and draw a simple but functional map of the goal to achieve in every project.
2.- We defined that, in order to trigger innovation, we would need to integrate the different teams involved in the project since early stages of the pre-production phase to evaluate solutions not just from an architectural point of view but from production or project management point of view.
3.- The Design process is then detailed into a project workflow that involves teams to visualize and understand important touchpoints and define important documents, data analysis, decision making and design proposals.
In order to make an educated decision of a valid design proposal, the main parameter is to correctly analyze and balance the main actors´ needs, such as:
-Client needs
-User Needs
-Fabrication Needs
to integrate them in a solid Viable, Feasible and Desirable design solution.
This boards illustrate the brainstorming of possible solutions roughly represented with references and sketches, clustered inside the most common needs or requirements of every important actor of the project.
Once we built a general idea we then now sketch different design solutions and concepts.
Design Concept
What if you could be covered by the shade of a bird flock?
Thousands and thousands of independent agents moving randomly without crashing with each other, creating a cloud of elements that interact intelligently with each other to create a harmony among them and therefore a living system.
The concept is an exterior Shell that covers the whole structure, this shell has to mimic a bird flock system flying around the stadium letting some light pass though generating a sense of movement by the shading created by each individual element.
Concept Sketches
The first Step was to Design the overall design of the shell and rationalize it into geometrical information, in this case 2 Linear Surfaces can feed us enough data for the next steps.
How can we achieve this behaviour?
The idea is simple. Populate the surface area with a certain louver design (Agent) and somehow control it´s Position, X axis Rotation and Z Axis Rotation.
In order to mantain an interactive aesthetic, an attractor logic was implemented, by dividing the whole project in rows of elements with its own attractor point.
Louver design development sketches.(AIDIA DESIGN CENTER)
Design Problem: How can we populate the whole facade with thousands of this louvers and mantain a fluid shape?
Design Challenge: How can we attach this louvers to the main structure?
All 3D models, sketches, diagrams, drawings, renderings and videos were made by Aldo Muriel and AIDIA DESIGN CENTER.
WORK STILL IN PROGRESS...
